


The World Is Falling Around You

by glasscannon



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Based on a song, F/M, Introspection, Longing, POV Alternating, POV Second Person, POV alternating per chapter, Rumbelle - Freeform, Rumplestiltskin wakes up when Emma gets to town and is a maudlin muffin, S01E01 AU, Sometime Around Midnight, True Love, Unrequited Love, and then there's scotch, post-pilot AU, second person pov as introspection, sex mentioned in passing, the airborne toxic event
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-25
Packaged: 2018-05-16 08:39:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,681
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5821687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glasscannon/pseuds/glasscannon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>As your fingers wrap around the worn handle of the town’s only pub, you know it was always leading to this, all your plans and spells, all your schemes and deals, for more than three hundred years, have all led to this.  The Savior has come to unlock your mind and break the Curse, Bae is waiting to be found, somewhere out there in this vast foreign world, and Belle is alive, as cursed and damned as all the rest.  </p><p>RumBelle, post-pilot canon-divergent AU.  Alternating chapters of second-person as internal dialogue.  Inspired by the song “Sometime Around Midnight” by The Airborne Toxic Event.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The World Is Falling Around You

**Author's Note:**

> This story started life from a desire to write something based on "Sometime Around Midnight" by The Airborne Toxic Event, and an interest in playing around with second person pov as internal monologue. It took on a bit of a life of its own from there, and frankly surprised me with where the story ends up. I expect this to be three, maybe four chapters. I'm a slow writer, but as chapter two is almost done (and already double the length of this chapter), I thought it was time to get Rumplestiltskin's maudlin thoughts out there for you all to enjoy.
> 
> There are bits of this that are based very closely on the lyrics to "Sometime Around Midnight". If a phrase sounds like it comes from the song, it almost certainly does. No infringement intended, all respect to The Airborne Toxic Event.

**The World Is Falling Around You**

_You just have to see her,_

_You just have to see her,_

_You just have to see her,_

_You know that she’ll break you in two._

 

 

**To See Her**

_Swan.  Emma Swan_.

The name tears through your mind like a thunder clap, throwing open doors and blowing out windows long nailed shut, upending everything and then shaking it violently into a new – _old_ – sense of order.  Just as you intended.  Just as you planned, all those long, lonely years ago.

“Emma,” you manage to say, your voice somehow steady as the world tilts and sways around you, as three centuries of working towards this moment, _this moment_ , storm in to eclipse your sad little existence in this sad little town.  “What a lovely name,” you add, smiling your crocodile’s smile.  It seems barely a week ago that you bargained with her mother for that name, all for this moment.

You take the wolf-woman’s proffered payment, force the dull routine of it to infuse your movements with some form of normality, though you feel anything but.  Yes, you think, this is her, this is the Savior, with her mother’s chin and her father’s coloring, this is the child you hung all your hopes from, spells spun and plans dangled from, like the unicorns that once danced above her cradle.  She was an infant a moment ago, twenty-eight years passing in barely the blink of an eye, as your consciousness neatly folds away the decades of _Mr. Gold_ until the edges of _Rumplestiltskin_ meet once more.

“You enjoy your stay… Emma,” you say as you turn to go, and she merely raises her eyebrows at you in a perfect impression of her shepherd father.  True Love is written in every line of her, as you knew it would be.  As it must be, if the Curse is to be broken, if your son is to be found.

As you cross the small lobby the pain in your leg is both familiar and foreign, hallmark of a life long since passed, of a second life lived as a lie.  You are no longer the tittering imp they all expect you to be, but here there are none who remember to expect it.  It’s just as well; it was never true anyway.  The coward’s mark always suited you better, though now it comes with a gold-tipped cane.

The bell beside the door catches your eye and your heart stutters, the memories rushing in like feral waves to drag you under.  _Belle_.  Every moment, until the last, and of course she was correct: you will regret your decision forever.  And not just because your actions sent her back to the cruel arms of her father and out a tower window to her death.  You regretted it the moment she was out of your sight, but you were too much of a coward to go after her and beg her forgiveness.

You would beg now, if you could.

And then your gaze lands on the wolf’s pup, lost Riding Hood still desperately reaching for Red, and a million more images flood your mind, choking you, drowning you.  Belle with this wolf-girl, laughing and talking, their heads bent close over blood-red cocktails, lips stained to match.  Belle at the diner with the winter sunlight streaming in, her nose deep in a book as her coffee grows cold at her elbow.  Belle in the market, passing you on the sidewalk, outside the post office, at the library, everywhere you turn in this cursed little town.  Belle, alive and well and close and just barely out of reach, for twenty-eight years.  Your mind flinches and your heart wails and still the memories come, swarming around you as you all but bolt from the inn.

They shouldn’t surprise you anymore, these lies Regina weaves to hurt you in every way she knows how. You made her life about hatred and vengeance, twisted her heart for your own purposes, so you can hardly consider it unexpected when she turns that power on you.  But for this, for making you believe Belle had died, for this you will make her pay.  For this you will have your revenge.

Your feet take you to the Rabbit Hole without a second thought, the autumn wind laying dead leaves like an offering in your path.  You have better booze in an antique cabinet in that pink monstrosity you call home, but your simmering rage will not wait that long, your need to break something, yourself or the very world around you, will not be silenced long enough for the lonely drive home.  So as your fingers wrap around the worn handle of the town’s only pub, you know it was always leading to this, all your plans and spells, all your schemes and deals, for more than three hundred years, have all led to this.  The Savior has come to unlock your mind and break the Curse, Bae is waiting to be found, somewhere out there in this vast foreign world, and Belle is alive, as cursed and damned as all the rest.

The man who has only ever been a barkeep, in this life or any other, looks surprised to see you, but takes your order of scotch, neat, without comment as you seat yourself at the empty bar.  There is a band in the far room playing some unwittingly ironic song about forgetting oneself for a while, the music drawing the cursed inhabitants of Storybrooke like moths to the proverbial flame.  You are an outsider among them, now more than ever, but you envy them their ignorance as the scotch sears its way down your throat.  The Curse will break, before Emma Swan’s next birthday, and they will remember all they’ve forgotten of themselves, but their hatred of you will remain, unchanged.

What will Belle think, you wonder, when the Curse finally breaks, when your role in all this becomes clear?  You never thought you’d have the chance to ask her, and you question now, with the clearheaded haze that can only be found at the bottom of a scotch glass, if you would have been able to finish the Curse, to negotiate those last few vital moves, if you had known Belle yet lived.  If she had never left, if you had never banished her for the sin of loving you, could you have completed it?  Could you have loved her without losing sight of Bae?  Or would she have broken you in two, as it had felt that afternoon when she kissed you next to your spinning wheel?

There will come a day, in the not too distant future, when the Curse will break, and you will stand at the town line and step across it into all that lies beyond, into this world without magic that hides your son.  Would Belle go with you, if you asked her?  Would she keep her promise of forever?

Snorting at your own maudlin self-delusion, you finish your scotch and wave the bartender over for another.  For all you know, she may never want to see you again, cursed or uncursed.  Your life has been one long litany of those you love leaving, why should Belle be any different?  You gave her more than ample reason, after all.  You were the one who sent her away in the first place.  It was you who molded Regina into a creature so spiteful she lied about Belle’s death simply to hurt you, and the gods only know what she did to Belle to keep her hidden from you.  It was your Curse that tore apart the only world Belle had ever known, it was your price that stole her from her father and the life she was meant to have.  You would beg her forgiveness now if you could, but where would you even begin?

You couldn’t say how long you’ve been staring at her as you become aware of it in increments: the warm glow of the bar lights on her dark hair, the pale sweep of her neck, the flushed curve of her lips as she turns to someone at her elbow, laughing.  The lingering echo of it reaches you from the far room, over the dull roar of the weekend crowd and the band’s naïve lyrics, across all the years and wrongs that separate you, the piano a melancholy soundtrack to her smile, and you force yourself to look away, to turn back to your scotch and your schemes, away from this specter with your True Love’s face. 

On some deep, unspoken level, you knew she would be here, your heart and your feet conspiring to find her the moment you realized she was alive, but she is a stranger to you still.  Whatever grew between you long ago, wherever your future might lead, in this moment she is Lacey French, who neither remembers why she loved you nor knows all the reasons she should hate you.  And perhaps, you think, as the scotch burns away the last of your defenses, as the band plays a song about yearning for a home long since lost, perhaps that is for the best.  The Curse will break, and she will remember, she will know who you are to the depths of your blackened heart, but for now she should be allowed to live without the darkness your presence always brought to her life.  You found the strength to let her go once before, somehow you must find a way once again.

“Hey Lacey,” the barman calls, dragging you from your thoughts, his gaze directed over your right shoulder, and you close your eyes momentarily against the inevitability of the coming pain. “Another vodka tonic?”

“Nah, I need a change of pace,” her voice says, far too familiar for this of all nights, the sounds of the crowd all but drowning out her heel clicks approaching from behind you.  “Give me a rum and…”  She stutters to a stop as she leans against the bar, her wide eyes on your face, and you are lost.  Shaking herself, she turns back to the bartender to complete her order and allow you to breathe again: “A rum and coke.”

She seats herself next to you, her white dress gleaming under the bar lights, though she has her choice of any chair along the empty bar, as the other patrons drift towards the distant music.

“Miss French,” you murmur in greeting, after the barkeep leaves her to her drink.  She could never be _Lacey_ to you, but you cling to the name the Curse gave her, afraid of what will come out of your mouth if you don’t.

“Back to last names again, are we?” she replies, arching an eyebrow and stirring her drink, and in a flash your mind calls up the fabricated memories that lie buried beneath twenty-eight years of life lived under the Curse, until you can smell her perfume, until you can see her lying naked in your arms.  An affair that ended badly, and though it is false through and through, you wish you could find the lie in that.

“And what brings you to our quaint little tavern tonight, Mr. Gold?” she continues, unperturbed by the tearing in your heart.

You raise your glass in answer, some of the imp’s old theatricality coloring your movements, and watch the light sparkle through the tawny liquid.  “You might say I’ve had a long day,” you say.  It seems an eon since you slept, and next to her preternaturally preserved youth, you are revealed as the ancient and terrible monster you always knew yourself to be.

“Must have been a very long day,” she says, her eyes on her drink rather than on you.  “You’re looking downright _rumpled_.  That’s not like you.”

You smile with false bravado, though your viscera run cold at her word choice.  “I wasn’t aware anyone still used that expression,” you murmur, against your better judgment.  “ _Rumpled._ ”

She blushes to the tips of her ears, and you wish you knew why.  “The curse of the librarian,” she says ruefully, after taking a long drink.  “Always using archaic language.”

“Ah yes, blame it on the books,” you reply, banishing the true memory of her curled up in a corner of your vast library, lost in a story, caretaking momentarily forgotten.  “And just what have you been reading recently, Miss French?”

She tilts her head to one side as if considering, though you know her well enough to realize that she could list the titles of the last twenty books she read without pausing for breath.  “I finished _Bel Ami_ the other day,” she says, idly stirring her drink.  “It wasn’t what I thought it would be,” she adds with a shrug, pausing to take a sip of her drink.  “Oh!  But speaking of books, little Henry Mills was in the library last week, and he mentioned that he was in your shop recently and saw you’d gotten in an antique copy of _Beauty And The Beast_ , is that right?”

You stare at your hands and will them not to shake as you raise the scotch to your lips.  “I may have,” you say, before swallowing the amber liquid.

She hums under her breath in the same way she always did when she knew you were lying but didn’t want to press you on it, and it’s a sheer act of will not to throw yourself at her feet and beg her to forgive you.  “Well, assuming the volume in question does exist, what would it take to get you to part with it?”

 _Nothing_ , you nearly say.  _Anything_.  But she saves you again, with the simple lilt of her voice:

“The fairy tale section of the library is woefully under-stocked, and _Beauty And The Beast_ has always been one of my favorites.”

 _Because it’s our story_ , you want to tell her, but the painful irony is that when the Curse breaks, she’ll hate that she ever loved it, with its sham of a happy ending.

“Mr. Gold?”  She is staring at you, blue eyes large and fathomless.

“I’d have to check my inventory, Miss French,” you say, and stare at nothing but your scotch.

“Tell you what, I’ll make you a deal,” she says offhandedly, gesturing with her drink, and you feel your fingers tighten around your tumbler.  “If you do locate it – or any other fairy tale books, for that matter – just call me and I’ll see what city funds I can scrounge together.”

“I’m quite sure I no longer have your number,” you say, grasping for any excuse to avoid a repeat of this torturous proximity to the shadow of the woman who once claimed to love you.

She huffs out a laugh, half amusement and half disbelief, then reaches up and pulls a pen from her haphazardly piled hair, loosing the chestnut waves about her shoulders.  Freeing her cocktail napkin from beneath her drink, she scribbles across it with focused determination before sliding the napkin, now stained with the same blue ink that adorns her fingertips, towards your elbow.

You look away before your mind can register and recognize the slanting curves of her handwriting, painful in their familiarity.  “That’s assuming our dear Madam Mayor will even allocate money for the fairy tale section,” you say, your eyes on your drink, “which we both know, she won't.”

“No one decides how my library funds are spent but me,” she replies absently, and you glance back up at her to find that she is no longer looking at you, her gaze now directed across the noisy barroom, towards the stage peeking above the heads of the crowd.  One of Snow’s dwarves, you forget which one, if indeed you ever knew his name, has climbed drunkenly onto the stage to join the band’s lead singer in a song about a woman who kept her lover’s heart in a box.  You nearly laugh at the absurdity of it all.

“Lacey,” the barkeep calls from the far end of the bar, worry evident in his tone.

“Yeah, I see him,” she replies, voice serious and gaze still on the distant stage.  “Call us a cab, would you?” she asks him, before turning her bright eyes back towards you. 

“Well, it was lovely to see you, Mr. Gold,” she says, “but they’re, uh,” she chances a quick glance over her shoulder, to where the inebriated dwarf is belting out the song’s chorus, “they’re playing my song,” she finishes, smiling at you.  She tosses back the rest of her drink with easy grace, and if her gaze briefly strays to the napkin still resting by your hand, you force yourself not to read anything into it.

“And don’t forget,” she adds, climbing down from her barstool, “you promised me a story.  Beauty and the Beast.  When you find your copy, let me know.”

Keeping your focus on your scotch you hum noncommittally, resolutely not watching as she nods to the bartender and then slips off into the distant crowd, the clicks of her heels disappearing into the ambient noise all too quickly.  It was harder than you thought it would be, seeing her like that, and yet somehow easier to let her go.  Easier than the first time.  She isn’t Belle, not really, not here, no matter how much her talk of books and fairy tales might tempt your heart to believe otherwise.

You hear the moment she pulls Snow’s dwarf off the stage, the clatter and the cheer from the crowd, and you motion to the barkeep for another scotch, as though adding one more layer to a protection spell, buffering yourself from the world around you.  In this land without magic, if you guard your heart well enough, you may yet live to see Bae again.  The sleeping populace of this cursed little town is of no importance compared with finding your son, compared with completing the work of three centuries and keeping a promise to the only person who ever truly loved you.

Of no importance at all.  Merely transport.  Collateral damage.

Perhaps if you repeat it to yourself frequently enough, you’ll start to believe it again.  You wonder when you stopped.

You can feel her eyes on you from across the dim room, a prickling not unlike magic dancing across your skin, and your gaze turns in her direction before you can stop yourself.  Belle – Lacey – is standing at the door, pulling on a deep blue overcoat as she watches you, while nearby the drunken dwarf cries onto the shoulder of one of his slightly more sober compatriots, and with sudden stark clarity, you wonder if this will be the last time you will ever see her.  If this image of her, alive and glowing under the bar lights, will burn itself into your mind alongside every other memory of her face, one more tortuous comfort to cling to after she is gone from your life.

Some dark corner of your blackened soul weighs the heartache of every memory of Belle against every memory of Baelfire, and finds the scales teetering in perfect balance. 

She pauses on the threshold and looks right at you, her blue eyes holding a question you cannot hope to answer, then turns for the door and bolts, dwarf in tow, for reasons you cannot begin to comprehend.  There was never much of anything about Belle of Avonlea that you could claim to comprehend, not your sweet maid, not the complicated woman of your Curse memories, and certainly not the woman who had sat beside you tonight and smiled at you like you brought some worth into her life.  You cannot comprehend.

You saw her alive and glowing under the bar lights, and that will have to be enough.  You have work yet to do, a Curse to break, your son to find.  Lacey French cannot be a part of that, and once the Curse is lifted, you will not allow yourself to spare any time in finding Bae.  You cannot wait, you cannot distract yourself with false hopes.  Belle lives.  It has to be enough.  For Bae’s sake, it has to be enough.

You finish your drink as the band starts a new song, then climb to your feet just to feel the sear of pain in your leg, pull out your billfold and leave more than enough to cover your tab and hers on the bar.  And then, against your better judgment but at the demand of your traitorous heart, your eyes catch on her elegant blue scrawl across the napkin beside your hand.  Beneath the seven digits of her ever-familiar phone number are two simple lines of text:

_Call when you find it,_

_-B_

The world is falling around you, and suddenly it all seems so transparent, like breadcrumbs through the forest leading you home.  It cannot be, and yet what else could it be?  True Love can break any curse, as it must break the Curse on this town, as it nearly broke yours so long ago, as it has, impossibly, broken hers.  Your hand shakes as you reach for the napkin and smooth your thumb over the single initial _B_.

You have to see her.

“You alright there, Mr. Gold?” the barman asks.  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Turning on your heel, you stuff the napkin into your pocket and stride towards the door as fast as your limp will allow.  It’s only been a few minutes, she can’t have gotten far.  You have to see her, just see her and talk to her and confirm that this is real, that _she_ is real.  Your vision is narrowing and the bar’s patrons have faded into a steady hum behind your ears and you have to see her.  The Curse can wait, your wallowing misery can wait, even Bae can wait one evening longer.  You are hopeless and homeless and lost in this haze.

You just have to see her. 

You know she'll break you in two.


End file.
